


where you are is home

by cactuslesbian



Series: Two Birds On A Wire [2]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Percy Jackson Fusion, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Gen, kind of?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:13:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24341116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cactuslesbian/pseuds/cactuslesbian
Summary: tim and danny stoker arrive at camp
Relationships: Danny Stoker & Tim Stoker
Series: Two Birds On A Wire [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1757290
Comments: 3
Kudos: 21





	where you are is home

**Author's Note:**

> more tma pjao au bc discord! anyway. i am sad.

Tim is holding his side as Danny all but drags him up a steep hill. His vision blurs around the edges and his fingers are sticky with his own blood. He and Danny have had close calls their entire life, but this one. This seems to be a final nail in two small coffins. 

“Are they still behind us?” 

“Yeah. Three of them. Maybe more. I can hear them just past the road.” Danny sounds scared. Tim’s always hated knowing Danny is afraid and there’s nothing he can do about it, it’s the worst kind of helplessness. 

He remembers rocking Danny to sleep after nightmares, pushing his curls back and off his sweaty forehead, holding him in the dark of whatever foster home they’d been in for the time being. He’d sing to him sometimes. Little snippets of whatever was playing on the radio during the day. Little poems set to made up tunes. Nothing could get Danny Stoker to laugh quite like Shel Silverstein sung with the same melody as the Backstreet Boys.

There’s not going to be an easy way to ease his brother’s fears this time. That much Tim is certain of and the truth of it slithers like ice into his veins. Danny is only ten, but he’s strong and he's smart. He could make it, without Tim’s dead weight. If his brother keeps trying to drag him up the hill, they’re both going to die; the monsters will catch up and they will both die.

“Give me the knife, Danny,” Tim tries so hard to keep the pain from seeping into his voice, but it coats the words as they come out, making them sound choked and agonized. He's never been good at lying to Danny even when he isn't actively bleeding to death. “I’ll hold them back as long as I can. You need to run.”

“No!” Danny’s voice is high and shrill and he looks frantically from Tim to the looming shapes of the monsters as the approach. “I’m not leaving you, not ever!” 

“Damnit, Danny. Don’t you get it? They’re going to catch up.” Tim musters what strength he has to stand up fully, or at least as much as he can, even though his right leg feels like it’s full of television static and the blood on his side is making him cold. He holds Danny’s face in his hands and internally curses that stubborn streak that runs through them both, “I’m not letting you die.”

He thinks it would have been nice to see Danny get older, see him graduate high school ( hell, even middle school would be nice ), fall in love, become the man Tim knows he can be. He’s going to hate not being there for him, but this is a compromise he’s going to make. He’d make this choice a thousand times over if he had to.

“I’m sorry, Tim,” Danny whispers. He presses a kiss to Tim’s forehead before giving his brother a hard shove to the ground and turning to face the monsters coming their way on his own. The knife looks too big in his hand.

Tim hears someone _screaming_ , and it’s only years later that he realizes it was him who’d screamed that horrible blood-curdling scream. 

His memories are a blur that he can only barely make sense of; There are monsters advancing on Danny; they’re hurting him. And then the monsters turn to dust under a volley of arrows, someone hovers above his head asking something in a garbled voice that sounds as though they’re speaking from underwater. Tim is only faintly aware that he’s asking for Danny. _Danny_. Where is Danny? Is he alright? 

Then he only sees the figure out of the corner of his eyes, he’s standing over someone; the shape on the ground is dressed in the seafoam green hoodie Danny had bought from the boardwalk in Santa Cruz ages ago. The hoodie he meticulously kept clean even as they made their way cross country, fighting monsters and running for their lives. Even in this state, Tim can see that hoodie grow dark and slick.

As Tim's vision begins to fade, he sees the body dressed in his brother’s clothes slowly morph into- into- a fountain? That... that can’t be right.

But whatever is happening, it’s the last thing Tim is aware of with any level of certainty. 

  
  


-

When he wakes it’s in a clean room, wrapped in soft linen sheets and blue blanket. The girl hovering above him is maybe fourteen, fifteen, hair made of flyaway curls with a bright rainbow ribbon acting as a headband. 

“Oh, thank gods,” She breathes. She puts down the mason jar full of slightly glittering liquid on the nightstand in order to lean close enough that her hair brushes his nose. “We were so worried. It’s Tim, right?”

“Tim Stoker, yeah.” He moves to sit up but the girl’s gently pushing him back down. Tim’s dark eyes scan the room for signs of another bed, for the familiar sight of his brother, but comes up empty, “Wh-where’s Danny?”

“You’re hurt pretty bad. Try... try not to agitate anything just yet.” She leans back, “I’m Helen. You’re probably going to be staying in my cabin when... when you’re up to it. I’m going to go grab Chiron, alright?”

Tim’s stomach sinks as the realization settles. He can hear the blood roaring in his ears like the tide and all at once wants to vomit and cry.

“Danny didn’t make it.”

It’s not a question.

“We got there too late, Tim, I’m sorry.” Helen tries to say. She reaches for the words, struggles with them, but it doesn’t matter.

“Get out.” Tim breathes. And then his gaze hardens, “Get. Out.”

“Tim, I-”

“ **Get out!** ” and as he yells, the vase of flowers, lillies he thinks, shatters. Helen doesn’t need to be told twice; she gathers the jar, stands up, and leaves him be. And as the door shuts behind her, Tim pulls the pillow over his face and screams into it until his throat is raw.

**Author's Note:**

> Tim and Danny are both Poseidon spawns, Helen is a child of iris who will come up again.


End file.
